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  1. Surely it should be obvious to the dimmest executive that trust, that most valuable of economic assets, is easily destroyed and hugely expensive to restore—and that few things are more likely to destroy trust than a company letting sensitive personal data get into the wrong hands.

Is "that" simply a determinative or a pron, referring back to "trust"？

In other words, can I read it this way:

1a. ... executive that trust, that (being) most valuable of economic assets, is...

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    Please provide proper attribution for the text that you quote. That means title, author, and publication, or as many of those as are available. If the source is long, such as a book, please include a page number or other location also. If the source is online, please include a link also. See Marking and Attributing Examples, Sources, and Other Quotes
    – David Siegel
    Commented Mar 2, 2023 at 23:25

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It is a determiner, it answer the question "which assets".

Note, for example, it could be replaced with other determiners: "my most valuable of economic assets", but it could not be replaced with a noun "trust", not even in paraphrase. BillJ notes that "valuable" is a fused modifier-head.

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